Re: Electric power and Museveni's Cabinet
Comrade Tacca,
I have always treasured your weekly 'Monitor' column.
This week's however left me baffled !!
To hope that Hilary Onek, individually, can solve Uganda's electric power problems seems so unrealistic.
Is not what is needed a generation of more electrical energy ?
What special attributes does Onek have that, by waving a magic wand like God, command that 'Let there be more electrical energy' ?
Unrealistic hopes only sets us and him up for a big fall !!
I have to ask you why Professor Banda, who spent only a few months in the electricity sector quit.
Now if you want to know Africa's 'rocket scientists', you will find Dr Banda up there holding the flag. His high regard extends far and wide, not only in Uganda/East Africa but also here in North America and in China.
You remember former Education Minister, Prof Abel Rwendeire, who too jumped out of Museveni's moribund outfit ?
When you see our very best run I suspect they are overwhelmed by the regime's stinking rot, thieving and criminality. They have treasured reputations to protect.
May be Hilary Onek is in this class too, but unlike, say, Dr Banda, his name has not been heard so reverently referred to here.
In Moscow where he went to school there may be this international reverence. But does he claim to have a ready solution to our energy problem ?
At any rate you could use your respected column to help open a debate for us on a real longtime solution to our energy needs, including the nuclear option as President Mbeki advised Ugandans. South Africa has invented a new 'poor man's nuclear reactor', the pebble bed technology.
Why not ask President Mbeki more about the advice he gave our country when he last visited ?.
I pleasantly came to understand that Japan, the EU, and the USA are busy forging ahead with an initial $20 billion investment in the fusion research project. They expect breakthroughs in about 20 to 40 years.
I am also very sad that my political leaders here in Canada, fearing the cost, chickened out of participation.
When this thermo-nuclear technology is eventually rolled out Africa's geo-physical features show that Zimbabwe is sitting on the raw material, lithium, so stupendous that Saudi Arabia and all the world's petroleum areas will seem like a non story.
It is imperative that we, at the least, start this debate now.
God endowed our continent like no other. Except we her children have yet to, first, break the shackles of slavery and bondage.
Thank you.
Mitayo Potosi
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| Electric power and Museveni's Cabinet |
| June 11 - 17, 2006 |
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Last week, I wrote and filed before President Museveni published the list of his ministerial allocations. When the list appeared in the Friday morning papers, I called the Sunday Monitor and assured the editors that I found no need to make changes to the article. Although I freely chose to write from the widely held assumption that Eng. Hillary Onek and Eng. Simon D'Ujanga would be posted to Energy to sort out the crippling power crisis, I observed that the President's final decisions in such matters could be truly confounding. Indeed, Mr Museveni sometimes appears to get a kind of mischievous pleasure from just defying what "most people" expect. So I cautioned that we should not be entirely surprised if Onek got something like the Gender ministry. The President has been true to form; Onek got Agriculture. But like many other events related to Museveni's Cabinet that make us smile, the decision was not necessarily illogical. Take Gen. Salim Saleh's pre-Cabinet radio talk-show rhetorical question, when he wondered whether, surely, it was only he, Saleh, who would die without ever becoming a minister? He made a ministerial post look almost like a universal human right. A number of people applauded. He subsequently got bolder and actually specified the slot he wanted: Finance. The President obliged, parcelling out to him the multi-billion-shilling Micro Finance department so that (in effect) the two brothers may make all Uganda's small people very rich! I did not smile over this one; I laughed. But then Saleh may (or should) not really be after Micro Finance. I think it is a tactical trick. Museveni knows that Saleh will probably bring as much chaos as charm to his new office. But the appointment in itself introduces Saleh into the pool that the President habitually rearranges to suit his political needs. Once in the pool, it is easier for Museveni to smuggle Saleh into Defence, should the need arise. Who knows; there may even be "demonstrations" by Saleh's admirers demanding such a move. So Dr Crispus Kiyonga, and Ms Ruth Nankabirwa (the two now at Defence) will be frequently glancing over their shoulders. But back to Onek, the new Agriculture minister, who almost everybody thought would go to Energy. Now, precisely because of the electricity crisis, Museveni would want to be in even more control of the Energy ministry than ever before. If it were feasible, he would have only "ceremonial" ministers in that sector. For the actual job of delivering electricity, he would use technocrats as tools for his "vision", switching them on and off as he wanted, unencumbered by administrative protocol or regulatory and contractual rules. As you can see, if the reports about Onek are accurate, he could be an inconvenient (if rational) force limiting the President's freedom. But since he is in Cabinet, Museveni can always access and quietly ask him any questions related to electricity. At the same time, people will not say that Onek was "left out". When he learns how to toe the "correct line", he may even be switched to Energy. It is easy to think that the new Energy minister, Daudi Migereko, may have been bewitched. Look at his cycle: when the seeds of the current power crisis were being sown, Mr Migereko was the junior minister under Ms Syda Bumba in the Energy department. When the crisis was blossoming, Museveni sent Migereko to Industry and Tourism to taste the honey from that sector under declining power production conditions. Now that the crisis is at its peak, with industrial output and revenue collection falling, Museveni has returned Migereko to Energy as the senior minister to take the flak. [EMAIL PROTECTED] |
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